The Charmers: A Novel(57)

Still, no need for a “princess” like me to worry about drugstore lipstick; the bathroom vanity had everything any woman could possibly need, or even think of, from Estée Lauder night cream to nail polish remover. Looking at my chipped fingernails I decided I’d better use it.

What was I thinking? Had my brain gone into complete denial? Gradually last night’s events floated back through whatever brain cells I might have left. I remember recognizing I was dying, wondering if this was what happened. Closing my eyes, I felt again the sensation of the waves washing over me, the icy chill of the water that was so pleasant in the daytime when swimming. But I had not been swimming. I could not move. And then I was plucked from that sea like some forgotten mermaid by a man whose kindness of heart, whose bravery I admired. And who I was now falling in love with. The Boss.

I lay back against the pile of sumptuous pillows, softer surely than any I had known before. If riches meant you could have pillows like these then I would like to be rich.

Of course, it also meant you could own a guesthouse like this, a small villa in its own right, and far larger than most New York or London apartments. At the windows, thin white curtains swayed in the breeze, and the pale travertine floors were scattered with rugs of modern design. A white sofa and a huge chair were in front of the stone fireplace already set with kindling and a couple of small logs, in case, I guessed, I felt the need. Or simply wanted that comforting glow.

I was lying dead center in a bed so large it must have been made for giants. Perhaps for the Boss himself, who was a bit of a giant, with his great height and his broad shoulders, though I could not imagine him liking the silken sheets in a pale peach color. I scrunched them in my fingers. Were they really silk? I had never known anyone in my life who had silk sheets. Never would again either, I guessed.

I wanted to move, to get up, walk around but that weight seemed still on my chest and there was a definite buzz in my ears. Or was it in my head?

I also wanted badly to cry but my eyes were so dry I could not. There was a knock on the door. I was afraid to speak, to say, “come in,” because I had no idea who might be out there.

The door pushed slowly open, and then Chad Prescott put his head around it and said, “Hi, are you awake?”

Oh God, I was so awake at that moment I almost could have leapt out of bed. And not only that, behind him came the Colonel. Later, I wondered if I could be in love with three men at once. The Colonel, the Boss, and Chad Prescott. Surely that was not normal. A girl fell in love with one guy and that was that.

Nevertheless, being a fair person, I gave both men equal smiles, or something I hoped approximated a smile. Recalling the cheating husband, I reminded myself warily, this was my own life I was talking about. One mistake was enough.

Then the Boss came in and I had all three charmers.

The Boss came and stood possessively at the head of the bed. He threw me a smile of such tenderness, I melted all over again. I wished I had lip gloss and a spray of that lingering Evening in Paris. One day I was going to find out who that had belonged to, who had lived here, who had left her reminder for me to enjoy.

Why, I wondered, had it taken this terrible experience to discover what life and love were all about, when women like Mirabella seemed simply to know it all by some feminine instinct that perhaps I did not possess?

It was the Boss I saved my special smile for, though. The big, handsome hero with his dark hair swept back from his forehead, his deep dark eyes that took me in as though he owned me; his cool hand that gripped mine as if he never wanted to let me go. When a man feels like that about you and lets you know it, subtly, but overwhelmingly, most women are sunk. I know I was. Right there and then. All over again.

But yet there was also my Colonel, my other hero. The family man, the one I knew I should fall for, not the bad boy I knew the Boss was at heart. Or even the beauteous Chad. But anyway Chad was spoken for, by Mirabella. Good luck to her. I was going to take what I wanted, and right now, it was the Boss, who had saved me, rescued me, looked after me like he loved me. How could I not?

Yet, somebody had also wanted to kill me, and I was afraid. I felt myself drifting backward again, into that dark place, where I did not have to deal with life and love and reality.

Somehow it was safer there.





48

Paris

Mirabella

In Paris, I wasn’t surprised to bump into Chad Prescott. When I saw him, I felt that dangerous flutter in my stomach I recognized as a prequel to falling in love, a seemingly necessary process the body goes through to let you know, in your brain, where you’re at. Or at least where you’re going, because when that moment hits you, there is no going back.

“What a surprise,” I’d said, though why I was surprised I did not know, since I was sitting at one of the overly small tables outside the Café de Flore at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain, where everybody in the world passes by at some time or other. Or so it appeared to me, a woman who had spent many happy hours there, over a glass of this or that, making a tiny bowl of peanuts last longer than anyone ever thought possible. I love the Flore because they never hurry you, and the waiters never give you that stare, unless you are the worst kind of tourist, the ones sneaking smartphone shots of celebrities or of quirky folks. The Flore is tailor-made for the quirky, and even in winter, it’s the place to go.

Back in the day, I would sit inside on a red banquette with the snow fluttering against the window, knowing my flight out to wherever was doomed by the weather, making more than the best of it, nibbling on the tastiest herb omelette in the world, good eggs scattered with thyme, rosemary, and lavender. Hot from the pan, it slid down the throat like manna from heaven. Who cared about a missed flight when you were already in Paris and eating like a king?